Mark Powell's Page

When I was at the gym today, I happened to think "Hey, isn't Aphex Twin Welsh?". The answer, of course, is "yes". And there is another Welsh artist whose name is even further out there. It's Thighpaulsandra. I know the latter from his collaboration with Coil.

Thighpaulsandra is a bit edgy for me (I'm showing my age now), but Aphex Twin's ambient music is actually good stuff to listen to while running or lifting weights. I'm sure he'd be delighted to know how much he's helping middle-aged Americ… Continue

On this day in Welsh history...nothing happened! So says the Welsh Calendar.
http://welshcalendar.blogspot.com/2008/12/maymai.html

But, and it's a big "but", the 18th was Bertrand Russell's birthday!

As a present to myself, I have just bought another copy of "Unpopular Essays", my well-worn copy having evaporated.

What a rare man. A giant of mathematics and philosophy who single-handedly challenged mathematical empiricism, Aristotle, and the Christian Church, he also had the courage of his po… Continue

Has anyone ever noticed that, during the Linux boot process, there used to be a kernel message "Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039"? It had to do with the TCP/IP networking stack, and was removed from the source code in 2003:

http://twenty.sucs.org/TheSociety/About

There are links on the page cited above to material about Linux hero Alan Cox, who still lives in Swansea. He is also the Technical Director of CymruNet http://wri.cymru.net/ .